Vince stops by the tailgate and rests a hand on it.
“Wouldn’t have thought of it in a million years,” he says, following my gaze. “But I can’t unsee it now.”
I don’t reply. I just keep looking at Lance for another second before turning back to Vince.
“Learned the hard way that waiting costs more than you think,” Vince continues, his voice carrying the weight of years. He sighs once. “Some things you don’t get back if you drag your feet too long.”
Vince has never been one for long speeches, so when he says something like this, it hits differently.
I give him a short nod. He holds my eyes a beat longer, then claps me on the shoulder.
“Drive safe.”
We climb into the truck. Lance pulls back out into traffic. Sunday traffic out of the city is its usual nightmare, but once we clear the bridge, it finally opens up. It’s just the two of us now.
He sits in the driver’s seat with his left knee cocked against the door panel, both hands loose on the wheel. He looks way too comfortable in my truck. The manual transmission can be stiff as hell, something he’s bitched about plenty of times, but he handles it fine anyway. He always figures shit out fast. It annoys me about half the time.
He doesn’t say anything for a while, and neither do I. The 101 on-ramp appears ahead and he merges. He knows this truck well, knows its blind spot on the right. I notice how much he knows about me and my stuff without either of us ever wondering about when it started.
The bridge cables cut across the gray sky and the bay sits wide and flat on both sides, dark water with white chop running east.Lance has both windows cracked. The cold air coming off the water smells like salt and diesel.
The Calling drifts through the speakers with ‘Wherever You Will Go’, warm and worn from a hundred plays.
“You’re the only person under sixty who still has a tape deck.”
“It came with the truck.”
“You could have had the dealer swap it,” he counters.
“Why the hell would I do that?” My tone makes it clear how ridiculous I think the idea is.
Lance glances at the dash, at the tapes visible in the holder on the sun visor. He reaches up and thumbs through them. “All handwritten labels.”
“Yeah. Most are from my dad’s collection. Blue ink is his. Black is mine.”
He pulls one free and reads it sideways. “Nineteen ninety-one. That’s before we were born.”
“His taste always ran behind the times. He kept buying tapes into the mid-nineties when everyone else had moved to CDs. Said the sound was better.”
Lance turns the tape over. “Was it?”
“Different. It’s warmer. He said digital was too clean.” I keep my eyes on the road. “He wasn’t wrong.”
Lance slots it back and leans against the headrest. The skyline of San Francisco shrinks in the mirror. “How many have you made?”
“Close to two hundred total, counting my dad’s. Maybe sixty that I made myself.”
We stop for gas in King City. Lance comes back with chips, soft pretzel bites, and two large coffees. I take over driving. ‘Wonderwall’ by Oasis comes through next.
We’re past San Luis Obispo now, working down toward the central coast and into the valley. The traffic has thinned out and the hills on either side are dry brown in the way they go bySeptember, grass long since burned off. Lance finishes his chips and stuffs the empty bag into the cupholder.
We’re coming off the 5 when I take the Ortega Highway exit heading east.
Lance notices it fast. “George, that was the exit.”
“I know.”
A second later the excitement hits Lance’s voice. “We’re going to the ridge?”
